Sampling a fragment from Yedda Morrison’s Girl Scout Nation (Displaced Press, 2008); cf. trauma in the previous post. In Morrison’s work trauma is distributed, refunctioned, “naturalized.” Poet and ideal reader become identified the inviolable/violated figure of the Girl Scout who must see behind nature’s naturalization, where she finds:
in that stalker suit you’re hard to see
tracking prey against the wind
song of the bludgeoned Killdeer
oft empty twang
(we didn’t see it)
one looks for clues in the natural world
when girls go missing
for example the hair wad smells woodsy
and over the charred and glittery landscape
a thing
overgrown
extends and sticks
to the pallid thickness [1:26]
I am in agreement with Gail Scott’s comment on the back jacket: “I love this book!”
